We have found out via Facebook that Universal will release The Thing on April 29, 2011. This will be a reboot/prequel of John Carpenter‘s 1982 cult hit of the same name, which currently holds the #162 spot on IMDb’s Top 250. The top-billing actors for the remake will include Mary Elizabeth Winstead (who will be seen very soon as Ramona Flowers in Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World) and Joel Edgerton (The Square, Animal Kingdom).
Matthijs van Heijningen Jr. will direct the film, which is currently shooting throughout Canada. Universal has provided the following synopsis of the film:
Antarctica: an extraordinary continent of awesome beauty. It is also home to an isolated outpost where a discovery full of scientific possibility becomes a mission of survival when an alien is unearthed by a crew of international scientists. The shape-shifting creature, accidentally unleashed at this marooned colony, has the ability to turn itself into a perfect replica of any living being. It can look just like you or me, but inside, it remains inhuman. In the thriller The Thing, paranoia spreads like an epidemic among a group of researchers as they’re infected, one by one, by a mystery from another planet.
Paleontologist Kate Lloyd (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) has traveled to the desolate region for the expedition of her lifetime. Joining a Norwegian scientific team that has stumbled across an extraterrestrial ship buried in the ice, she discovers an organism that seems to have died in the crash eons ago. But it is about to wake up.
When a simple experiment frees the alien from its frozen prison, Kate must join the crew’s pilot, Carter (Joel Edgerton), to keep it from killing them off one at a time. And in this vast, intense land, a parasite that can mimic anything it touches will pit human against human as it tries to survive and flourish.
Does this remake have potential? What did you think of the original?
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